Trip Report: Chad – Country #191

Trip Report: Chad

Visited in June 2025

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Chad was my country in 191/197 and my last in Africa, the continent with the most countries. 54 to be exact. That means more than one in four countries in the world is on this continent.

Jogi Löw, the former football coach who won the World Cup in 2014, once said: “a good start requires enthusiasm, a good finish requires discipline.” This quote could just as easily be applied to the road to 197. While I have never gotten tired of traveling, it took a lot of will and discipline to travel to Africa for the eighth, ninth or however many times at the end of this journey.

Chad, for example, was one of those countries that I wasn’t really looking forward to. To be more precise, this whole Central Africa trip, which took me to Gabon, the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in addition to Chad, was one that did not make me enthusiastic. In the end, however, it was much better than expected, at least in the first two countries. Perhaps, this could also apply to Chad.

If you want to visit Chad as a country counter, there are basically two options. Either a short visit to the capital N’Djamena or you have to take a lot of time to see the real highlights of the country, the Ennedi Plateau for example. With the finish line in sight, I chose the short option.

As the Chadian capital is not known for offering a wide range of activities for visitors, my stay was limited to two days. Two half days, to be precise. Arrival on a Sunday lunchtime and departure 24 hours later.

How do you actually get to Chad? Chad is actually not the best connected country in the world. Although the country is located in the middle of the African continent and should therefore be easily accessible, only five airlines fly there. In addition, N’Djamena airport charges exceptionally high taxes, which makes flights to or from Chad quite expensive.

In my case, it was once again Ethiopian Airlines that took me there. My journey started in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where I flew through the night to Addis Ababa. The flight took only four hours and I felt correspondingly exhausted when I arrived in the Ethiopian capital. The flight from Addis to N’Djamena took another 3.5 hours and fortunately I was able to get some more sleep there so that I arrived in Chad reasonably fit.

The arrival was all in all without any noteworthy events. I was lucky enough to be one of the first to enter the terminal, which is crucial in African countries, as otherwise, in the worst case, you have to wait for over an hour at passport control. They checked my visa, which I received from the embassy in Geneva in a record time of three days. After that, I had the stamp of my 191st country in my passport.

When I left the airport, I was met with a heat that I hadn’t experienced for a long time. The forecast for the day was 40°C. According to Google, however, it felt more like 45°C, which I found more realistic. In N’Djamena, it rarely gets below 20°C even at night, and the city is one of the hottest capitals in the world.

“It’s still bearable today,” said Ahmed, my driver. “It was much hotter yesterday.” According to the weather forecast, it was going to rain in the afternoon. Rain in combination with such heat was unimaginable for me. A large part of Chad is covered by the Sahara, which makes Chad one of the most arid countries in the world.

Before we set off, the car wouldn’t start. So I had problems with the vehicle in all four countries on this Central Africa trip. In all 54 African countries, I would estimate that I had a car breakdown in over 30 of them. Fortunately, this was a problem that Ahmed could solve in a minute.

Ahmed drove me to La Residence Hotel, which was only five minutes away from the airport. The hotel situation in N’Djamena is not great from a traveler’s perspective. There are few options and the hotels are also very expensive. This is probably due to the fact that Chad is one of those countries whose visitors are mainly NGO workers or Chinese construction workers. The country sees very few tourists.

After I dropped off my luggage and took a shower, the N’Djamena city tour began. The few sights of the capital were on the program as well as Gaoui, a kind of mini-museum about half an hour outside the city.

One reason why I wasn’t really looking forward to this stay in N’Djamena was not only the fact that it offered relatively little for visitors, but also that you were apparently not allowed to take photos in the city. At least that seems to be the consensus among travel bloggers. Not good, as I wanted to get a picture of myself in my last African country.

So I told Ahmed to take me to the places where it would be easy to take a photo. “You can take photos anywhere in N’Djamena!” said my driver. “Everywhere?” – “Yes, of course, everywhere.” – “But I shouldn’t take photos of the people?” – “Photograph whatever or whoever you want, if someone complains, we’ll tell them to f*ck off!” Ahmed didn’t say it in those exact words, but in spirit. I like pragmatic problem-solving skills.

N’Djamena struck me as a classic African capital. A typical street could just as easily be in Nouakchott, Niamey or dozens of other capitals on the continent. I could describe N’Djamena by dusty streets, not particularly beautiful architecture, many soldiers on the streets and a generally quite conservative appearance of the locals. Speaking of which, Ahmed told me I should not take photos of soldiers and policemen. That was the only limit, but that applies throughout Africa.

We visited the Cathedral Notre Dame de la Paix, the Grand Mosque (only from the outside, though), a somewhat unnecessary souvenir market and the Place de la Nation, the main attraction of N’Djamena, so to speak. In addition to the statues, there is also a martyrs’ cemetery and a replica of a Kaaba in this square. The latter was in a somewhat neglected state.

The Place de la Nation was definitely cool, the rest not so much. They were not bad, but just not very interesting attractions. However, I thought that N’Djamena had a cool vibe. Many young guys approached me, most of them wearing a football shirt, asking if they could take a photo with me. All in all, the people were friendly and N’Djamena was not the hostile city I had in mind.

We drove to Gaoui, the museum I mentioned before, in between. The drive took about 30 minutes. While the roads in N’Djamena were in good condition, the quality deteriorated sharply the closer we got to our destination. Gaoui already looked like a very rural area with dirt roads and all kinds of livestock on the roads.

Is Gaoui worth it? To be honest, not really for me. It’s a museum that shows tools from the last century, pottery and similar things. I’ve already seen dozens of pots that were used for grinding in the past, so I wasn’t particularly interested. On the other hand, there really isn’t much to do in N’Djamena. So the Gaoui visit was still a good idea. Besides, the traditional huts look cool.

My city tour was over after about four hours. To be honest, you don’t really need a guide for this; you can do it all yourself. Nevertheless, I have to say that Eyte Chad was by far the best and most professional tour operator I had on this trip to Central Africa. So if you feel uncomfortable traveling alone in N’djamena (especially when it comes to taking photos), you’re in good hands with this company.

When I got back to the hotel, it started to rain in biblical proportions. While N’Djamena seemed like an oven earlier, it now felt like a steam bath. An extremely unpleasant feeling, but also interesting, as I have never seen such a phenomenon anywhere else. By the way, it was interesting to note that the internet in the country seems to fail when it rains. Neither the hotel’s wifinor the mobile internet on my cell phone worked anymore.

On the second day, I went for a quick stroll before heading back to the airport. My last country in Africa was therefore a rather unspectacular visit, although I already suspected that it would be. Before my trip, I was still considering whether I should stay an extra day. After the first afternoon, I was glad that I hadn’t booked it that way.

All in all, my visit was okay. No negative incidents or anything else I could complain about. After all the stress in DRC, that was just as well. I was just happy that I had finished Africa.

Chad will certainly not be one of the most exciting countries in my memory. However, to be fair, I have to say that Chad does have some exciting areas, but as I said, you need a lot of time to visit them.

A visit to the Ennedi Plateau, for example, where you can see spectacular desert landscapes, takes about ten days. You sleep in a tent for the entire trip. No shower, no conformity, nothing. Not that I need too much luxury, but at that time such a trip would not have been for me. 😉 But who knows, maybe a trip like this will happen one day.

After the 54 countries in Africa, I have to say that this continent has shown me some of the best, but also some of the worst of this world. Visiting all 54 countries was a Herculean task. I often see people who have visited 100 countries, but only 5-10 of them were in Africa (including the usual suspects from North Africa and Southern Africa).

The truth is that the 54 African countries and Oceania are the real road to 197. The first 100 countries are usually the easy and fun ones. For this reason, I can’t stop emphasizing that if you want to travel to every country in the world, it’s extremely important to start early with Africa. Otherwise, you risk the second half being a very tiring and sometimes frustrating one (my country #115 was the 50% mark in Africa, by the way).

Now there are six countries to go before I reach the finish line. Six easy countries. My road to 197 will be over in less than two months.

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Click here to find the trip reports of all 197 countries I have visited!